becoming energy independent on its own. do you really think it will happen? because i still talk to a couple of people in the oim and gas industry that say, you know what? it's a far cry from the reality out there. we're still going to see the middle east being the dominating oil exporter. >>. >> i think in terms of any oil forecast, my experience is i'm lucky if i can forecast the oil price more than six months. so to forecast it eight years out, what's happened also is in terms of supply is that last year another reason why the oil price got held up was that we had problems in the north sea. the only nonopec user who came up with the goods was the u.s. everybody else failed as they always do. >> i was just wondering, christian, what your thoughts are. also, we were looking at the higher oil prices. higher being anything north of 100 at the time saying it's going to slow down a recovery in markets. this time around, now we're using to prices being in the region of 100. but what are your thoughts when you look at oil at the moment? >> well, we've had these tw